Explore - A Systematic Review of The Evidence Base for the Lightning Process - 2020 - by Phil Parker et al

I was surprised by that as well.

 

i think Brian Hughes wrote something along those lines in a blog post

 

YES, Brian Hughes was the one who said it. Thank you, David. So much easier to find once the name is right.

It was in "My letter to the BMJ on its "ambiguous editorial commitment to scientific rigour"

If the ‘Lightning Process’ is in fact shown to work, we will need to re-write our physiology and neurology textbooks.

 

And possibly the physics and chemistry textbooks as well. Conversion disorder doesn't have spooky action at a distance but it does make claims on the same level as telekinesis and remote sensing in terms of defying all physical laws.

One of those "big if true" that is entirely unironic and technically true. Right along with if the universe is a giant marshmallow, unicorns must be real. If. Big if energy.

 

https://twitter.com/user/status/1294949190867587073

 

The Science Bit - Two takes on the expensive, unproven, and childishly-named quackery known as the Lightning Process by professor Brian Hughes

Article refers to Tuller's "The Lightning Process Strikes again" and Nina E. Steinkopf's recent article on an application for ethical approval of a planned LP-study in Norway as well as the paper discussed in this thread.

I have read the paper in question. Its findings are, shall we say, pretty weak.

The title says it is a “systematic review.” However, the paper does not contain a statistical synthesis of findings drawn from separate studies, as a formal “systematic review” actually should. Instead, it consists of a set of paragraphs describing ten surveys and four “non-survey” statistical studies of LP.

ETA:
This so-called “systematic review” is surely one of the most atrocious academic papers that I have ever had the misfortune to read. It isn’t even a “systematic review”. Rather, it is a self-serving pseudostatistical jargon-filled waffle-fest, utterly untroubled by even the tiniest smidgen of scholarly objectivity. It is, in fact, deeply depressing.

 

(Post this quote from another thread here as it also refers to the review.)

"As there is a body of research supporting its efficacy with fatigue and pain (see the systematic review), these issues have been instrumental in the Lightning Process research group beginning a study focused on discovering if the Lightning Process can help reduce the time it takes to return to work and wellness for those with long covid. The early findings are promising and we hope to have research published soon."

https://lightningprocess.co.uk/rese...ocess-for-cfs-me-pain-anxiety-and-depression/

Bold statements -- among others, to say the authors were "a team from Kings College London and London Metropolitan University"

(The only additional info to those others posted about Jacqui Aston that I find now: )

https://lightningprocess.com/meet-our-practitioners-jacqui-aston/

 

A "team from Kings College London and London Metropolitan University" that happens to include the inventor and owner of the trademark. Yes, totally legit.

It's really shocking that this is allowed and seen as perfectly normal, that the review was published seriously despite being written by the guy who invented the thing, a secret trademarked program that brings millions in revenue, who pretty much literally graded his own work as any trial of this has to include them and likely Parker himself, it's a secret program.

And it got published. Not as a joke or as an example of science gone wrong. No, it got seriously published. Medicine is completely broken. When it gets to this point, when egregious nonsense has been normalized to this point, it's that the whole system has descended into mediocrity, its foundations rotten. Easy to see why the field has stagnated for decades other than in very specific areas and largely driven by widespread technical progress outside the field.

 

why is this popping up today? It was published months ago.

 

But it likely has a better reputation than the Romanian Journal of Experiential Psychology (or something like that), in which Parker published a previous study about LP a couple years ago.

 

Parker's using the review as promotion on his website to target long covid patients [edit] and has announced a new study by "the Lightning Process research group":

"As there is a body of research supporting its efficacy with fatigue and pain (see the systematic review), these issues have been instrumental in the Lightning Process research group beginning a study focused on discovering if the Lightning Process can help reduce the time it takes to return to work and wellness for those with long covid. The early findings are promising and we hope to have research published soon."

source: https://www.philparker.org/long-covid-and-post-covid-fatigue-syndrome/

see the post above

and here: https://www.s4me.info/threads/lightning-process.5809/page-4#post-319623

Edited for clarity.

 

So I found a profile for Jacqueline Aston on researchgate.net that states she works in the department of Psychosis Studies at King College London but only lists three research papers on the Lightning process on her profile. The photo provided looks to be the same woman from the Lightning Process website (although she's changed her hair).

King's College list their staff members on their website you can look at the website of the department for Psychosis Studies here. There is no Jacqueline Aston in any of the staff categories. It doesn't look likely that she works there.

I did find another Jacqueline Aston who is a psychiatrist and does publish research on psychosis but she works for the University of Basel and her research output does not include any Lightning Process and seems to be a serious researcher. I couldn't find out whether she used to work at KCL but she has collaborated with them in the past. I bring this up because I'm wondering if the LP practitioner has taken advantage of the fact she has the same name as this other researcher to claim affiliation with KCL?

I found a linkedin page for Lisa de Rijk (the other author of the systematic review), it does state she's a visiting fellow at KCL but on Linkedin the profile owner is the one who who declares their affiliations so it may not be true that said I couldn't find any evidence to suggest that it wasn't. Her research output is on NLP which I don't think KCL would be researching but she has been chair of the UK Council of Psychotherapists before so maybe she's been invited to work with them on that?

Regardless of whether they work there or not I'm not sure KCL will be pleased with the LP association claim on the website.

Edit: Clarity
@dave30th would it be worth sending them a letter to clear this up?

 

Forgot to mention that on the systematic review it states that Aston and De Rijk work at KCL If they don't it could be considered research fraud. There's an article on false affiliations in research from Elizabeth Bik here.

Edit: Punctuation and Clarity

 

I'm sure that someone else also collected some info on the co-authors previously. It did sound as if academic affiliations had been hyped for this paper, but I can't remember the details now. Maybe worth a forum search?

 

Thanks I'll take a look. Apologies for the rambling nature of the above posts. I hadn't realised quite how brain fogged I was when I wrote them!

 

It looks as though Aston has an MSc. Was that frm KCL?